shelter
shelter (shĕlʹtər) noun
1. a. Something that provides cover or protection, as from the weather. b. A refuge; a haven. c. An establishment that provides temporary housing for homeless people.
2. The state of being covered or protected.
verb
sheltered, sheltering, shelters
verb, transitive
1. To provide cover or protection for.
2. To invest (income) to protect it from taxation.
verb, intransitive
To take cover; find refuge.
[Perhaps from Middle English sheltron, tight battle formation, from Old English scildtruma : scield, shield. See shield + truma, troop.]
shelʹterer noun
shelʹterless adjective
Synonyms: shelter, cover, retreat, refuge, asylum, sanctuary. These nouns refer to places affording protection, as from danger, or to the state of being protected. Shelter usually implies a covered or enclosed area that protects temporarily, as from injury or attack: A cold frame provides shelter for the seedlings. "And the dead tree gives no shelter" (T.S. Eliot). Cover suggests something, as bushes, that conceals: The army mounted the invasion under cover of darkness. Retreat applies chiefly to a secluded place to which one retires for meditation, peace, or privacy: Their cabin in the woods served as a retreat from the pressures of business. Refuge suggests a place of escape from pursuit or from difficulties that beset one: "vagrants and criminals, who make this wild country a refuge from justice" (Sir Walter Scott). "The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life" (George Bernard Shaw). Asylum adds to refuge the idea of legal protection against a pursuer or of immunity from arrest: "O! receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind" (Thomas Paine). Sanctuary denotes a sacred or inviolable place of refuge: Some of the political refugees found sanctuary in a monastery.